


A Mainstay in the Flux

by keire_ke



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dollhouse Fusion, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-29
Updated: 2016-08-29
Packaged: 2018-08-11 21:45:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7908706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keire_ke/pseuds/keire_ke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Morality is one of the few things Clint has nothing but positive feelings about. Like pizza. Except, unlike pizza, morality and ethics feature heavily in this new job of his, and his last job was shooting people. Clint likes the job for the perks, the flexible hours and the medical coverage. He is slightly suspicious about the fact that blond, buff and beefy can't seem to take his eyes off of the Winter Soldier, who is a lot less scary once you've seen him finger-paint.</p><p>But hey, the agreement had "Dollhouse" in its logo.</p><p>(this is a fusion with the TV series Dollhouse)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Award Winning Morality

**Author's Note:**

> A huge thank you to Elin, for helping me make the deadline! I have entered the SBB with a completely different story, which I had to put on hold in favour of this one, and I like to think it worked out, thanks in no small part to Elin's encouragement. :) This is loosely connected to the other stab at a Dollhouse AU Permanence in Motion, but there's no in-story connection between the two.
> 
> An enormous thank you and smooches for my artist, Brit! Please reblog and like [both](http://shutupimcreating.tumblr.com/post/149684171722/from-keire-kes-fic-a-mainstay-in-the-flux-its) [pictures](http://shutupimcreating.tumblr.com/post/149685219097/from-keire-kes-fic-a-mainstay-in-the-flux-its)!

Morality was one of the few things Clint had nothing but positive feelings about. Like pizza. Except, unlike pizza, it was all complex and twisty. Even though, like pizza, it was very important. So very, very important.

"What's your position?" he heard through his earpiece and grinned to himself.

"All clear on the western front." He had the target in his sights. It was a tricky shot – at an angle, narrow window of opportunity, small chance of success. Hence Clint.

"Fire at will," said the dude Clint had dubbed Mission Command in minute one.

"Aye aye, sir," Clint breathed and on the exhale released the arrow.

His bow was dismantled and stored in a neat little briefcase by the time the body across the street, past a cracked window and barely visible between two computer screens, hit the ground. Clint withdrew into the office, running down the deeply ingrained items on his mental checklist. First, drop the access card swiped from the office's regular occupant on their desk. Get the gloves off, gloves are suspicious. Pocket them; gloves don't come cheap. Lock the door behind you with your elbow. Hold the elevator for a frazzled intern. Check, Clint thought triumphantly, as he used his knuckle to press G on the panel.

Mission Command's voice filled his ear. "Report?"

Clint made a show of opening his cellphone and putting it to his ear. "Hey, good to hear you. I got it settled. We can move in anytime."

"Roger that. Walk out the main door, there will be a black Toyota waiting for you at the curb in twenty-eight seconds, registration plate 2139 BKX. Your tac gear is inside. You will have four and a half minutes."

"I love the vegan place," Clint said, making a face at the intern, who giggled into her full-milk latte as she answered an email on her blackberry with her other hand.

"The driver will provide further instructions. Over and out."

"See you then," Clint said and pocketed the phone, right on top of his shooting gloves. When the elevator stopped he made his way through the lobby at a leisurely pace, pausing at the reception to report lack of toilet paper on the thirteenth floor. "So sorry to bother you with this!" he added, while the girl manning the desk offered up a smile and picked up the phone.

Clint dithered for six more seconds, then turned, exited the building and got into the Toyota, which had just pulled up to the curb.

"Hi," he told the young woman in the front seat. Her name was definitely not Scarlett, this wasn't Clint's first bull-riding competition-thing, but it did suit her, in this weird way that names sometimes did. "Good god, you are young for a professional driver." If he were completely honest, she seemed young for the line of work they were in the middle of, not that he had room to talk. And he knew from experience that a young, fragile-seeming woman could do things seven green berets would struggle with.

"Old enough to hold a license, Mr. Hawk," she said and pulled away from the door. "Hold tight."

License plate, check, code words, check. Clint stripped to his underwear and pulled the Kevlar suit on, over his comfy, breathing cotton-slash-lycra underwear, cursing only a little. He should not have had that pizza last night, not when he knew one of the super-high-tech gigs would follow, with the client providing his gear. That, or he should have updated his measurements, instead of rattling them from memory. Good grief, this was tight! But Clint was nothing if not persistent, so two minutes and forty-three seconds later he was ready, his bow once again taut in his hands. Phase two: guns blazing. No need to be coy.

"The garage door is open," the driver said as the car took a left, a few inches behind an unexpected bike messenger. Scarlett honked and cursed at the guy, who, in true New Yorker fashion, responded by flipping them the bird. "We will park by the ventilation shaft. Our window is about ten minutes, and we have to get to the tenth floor."

"Piece of cake." Clint leaned back and visualized the blueprints of the shaft. The Kevlar suit was equipped with a harness, and the tightly wound rope with a magnetic hook was already at his hip.

"Mission Command will meet us at extraction point, after the elimination of targets five, eight and thirteen. Extraction from the roof in thirty-eight minutes."

Clint nodded and rolled his shoulder. Three targets, three rooms, nearly half an hour. Piece of strawberry cake and then some.

The car swerved into the garage, parked neatly on space three hundred seventy-three. The woman in the front seat shed the valet uniform, revealing a scarlet Kevlar bodysuit beneath, and applied a creamy layer of matte scarlet lipstick, checking the side view mirror for guidance.

"Isn't that a little visible?" he asked, because with her small face and enormous eyes the lipstick really made an impression. Especially atop a scarlet bodysuit. "Hot damn, girl. You'd stand out at a warning sign convention!"

"You're holding a bow," she said with a faint smile.

"Fair point, that. Ready?"

"Ready."

The entrance to the ventilation shaft was narrow, which clearly wasn't a problem for the slim scarlet menace, but Clint very nearly dropped a hearing aid while floundering for purchase when his shoulders got stuck. "Need a hand?" Scarlett asked, hanging upside down in the shaft with a wicked grin on her pretty face.

"Need less hands," he grumbled, locking his knees against the wall and pushing. Yep, time to get measured again. Or, give up pizza. Clint grunted, pushed again and scrambled inside, one foot against the opposing wall soon as he could reach it. Whew! They might have been in the basement, but there was still a ways to go, should anything fall, before they hit the bottom of the shaft. But crippling fear of elevators aside, his partner was already half a story above, aiming her hook into the darkness over their heads, and with a faint whoosh of air she was off, pulled up by the supercool gizmo latched onto her suit. Clint waited a beat then followed, and followed again; four leaps and they were on the tenth floor, crawling into the ceiling space.

"We're in position," Scarlett said into her communicator.

"Roger that," Clint heard through his own earpiece. "Stick to your route. Twelve minutes until extraction, on my mark."

Stick to the route, Clint thought as they dropped through the ceiling, and arrows started flying. Scarlett whirled at his side, her hands doing that weird Tai-Chi thing, and the targets around her dropped like flies. Shuriken, probably, Clint concluded, with a measure of awed approval. Weird choice for a primary weapon, but she moved like she'd walked in with a plan, like she'd been doing nothing else her whole life.

He was approximately not at all surprised that the whole thing was over in under six minutes, along with the extraction. The elevator ride took a surprising five, although that also accounted for a suspiciously recently padlocked door to the rooftop. Scarlett was already kicking in a beaten-up ventilator high up a wall, but really, why kick in an entrance when lockpicks were at hand.

"After you," Clint gallantly offered, and was promptly rewarded with what was the dictionary definition of a sashay. "Although I am a little surprised you don't carry lockpicks."

"Oh, I did," Scarlett said over her shoulder. "But I'm skinny, and I like to show off."

"That's too nice a suit to ruin by squeezing through ventilator holes."

Scarlett grinned and shared a piece of cherry chewing gum.

They walked onto the roof, where a Fox News helicopter propellers were already spinning. Clint nodded to the redhead with her hands on the joystick – always a pleasure to see Natasha – and the blonde in the back, after which he strapped himself in, counting the obnoxious cherry-red pops in lieu of looking down at his watch.

Mission Command strolled out of the door twenty-six pops later, tall, blond and glamorous. He walked with a purpose, yet completely casually, like he had all the time in the world. That was a lot to pack into ten seconds, so Clint didn't feel at all ashamed that he was staring in anticipation. There just had to be an explosion coming. There had to. No one is that effortlessly cool without an explosion behind them. No one.

"Report," Mission Command said curtly, once his headpiece was secure, right over sensibly secured straps. He wasn't even looking at Clint, choosing instead to focus on the shrinking shadow of the chopper on the roof tiles. Which, fair to say, had to have been the cooler sight. Clint was pretty excited about choppers himself.

"Targets eliminated," Clint reported easily, as the shadow moved off of the roof. "Six extra casualties, all bodyguards, all from the provided list. Very exciting."

Mission Command nodded, and if Clint were standing he'd go a little weak at the knees. Damn, that man was good-looking. Particularly when he smiled.

"Evac in progress. ETA is thirty-nine minutes," Natasha said, and from the back-seat the blonde at the computer nodded to herself as her fingers flew across the keyboard.

"Feeds will unlock in five, four, three…"

The chopper made a sweeping tour of the city, casual, unhurried, while down below a visitor discovered a bloodbath and called the cops, presumably after having a good long panic session. This was the less cool part of the job, Clint felt. Poor visitor. There was a way to ruin one's day for good. Not that the floor got too many visitors, presumably. Yep, here come the cops. By the time the sirens were shut off at the front door, the Fox News helicopter was far away, spitting out its passengers into a couple of non-descript cars, which then took a few turns down kinda populated roads to find themselves in a garage with a seriously cool descending floor.

And damn, but did Clint wish he was more familiar with those people! There was a really good joke to be cracked, because the guy who was waiting for them looked like Shaft. Give and take an eyepatch and hair, respectively. The coolness factor was just right. Also the intimidation.

"This is new." Clint didn't feel the slightest bit bad about feeling very cautious all of sudden. Strange men in underground bases? A day in the life. Strange men in an underground base with chopper-type resources and a team of hitmen on his ass? He might have been a bow for hire and a bit of a slacker, but he was not a complete idiot.

"Director Fury." Natasha said for Clint's benefit, gesturing between them, a small smile on her face. "I stand by my recommendation."

"Noted. I'd like your full report as soon as you can give it. Commander?"

Mission Command lifted his head from where he was conversing with the blonde agent with the computer and taxed them with his gaze. "Sir?"

"What is your assessment of Mr. Barton?"

"I second Romanoff. He'd make a great asset to the team."

Director Fury nodded thoughtfully, looking first at Clint than at Scarlett, who'd slipped out of her seat to stand by his side. "Well then, Mr. Barton. It seems we have much to discuss. We will meet in the conference room for debriefing." His leather coat fluttered in the wind, which had no business being ten stories below ground, not in the quantities required to move leather, but then again Director Fury looked like the sort of man who didn't let weather get in the way of his drama.

They followed at a respectable distance. Clint found himself suitably impressed by the gleaming newness and steady hum of the elevator. He carefully ignored the two cams (independent power sources, wireless transmission) and watched Natasha stare into the tiny screen (retinal scanner) over brass keypad, before punching in a sequence of numbers (two-two-seven-eight-eleven), before selecting "lounge" from the floor buttons. This was how he saw Mission Command frown, as he stared out into the empty garage, crossing his arms over his tactical suit, then a flicker of confusion and despondence marred the reflection on the shiny brass surface of the panel. Clint shot a look over his shoulder, but the garage remained empty and dull, now that the lights were switched off and the floor returned to the garage above.

Huh.

He tried to keep track of the floors, but the elevator's smooth glide meant he had little to no idea which way they were even going. By the end he managed to conclude it was up, but only because the conference room boasted a whole wall of windows on the eastern side, which was something indeed, even if the view was generic.

"Coffee, Mr. Barton?"

Clint inclined his head, did a quick calculation regarding his caffeine levels and finally nodded. "Please." The woman who'd offered opened the door to the conference room and nodded at the secretary. Clint's hearing aids didn't pick up on the grinding and the humming of coffee being made, but his nose did, and good god, it smelled like caffeinated paradise.

"Mr. Barton?"

"Sorry. Coffee."

"You're a fan, I take it?"

"Oh yes," he breathed. When five minutes later the secretary opened the door and shouldered her way in, bearing a tray of five steaming cups, he nearly panted. "So, debrief?" he tried, as means of distracting himself from the heavenly aroma.

Director Fury gave him a long, slow look, then, still keeping his eye on Clint, addressed the room at large. "Report."

Mission Command launched into a very precise, succinct speech, highlighting the key moments of their mission and the execution of said, and only once or twice his eyes strayed to the door. Now there was an organized speaker. The curt sentences flowed smoothly from A, B, C to H, I, skipped to L and rounded up with an PQR and so on. Someone should give this man an award for leaving out information in a way that made it obvious the information was not meant for the ears of the infidels.

"Anything to add?" Fury asked once Mission Command was finished, and Clint straightened. His time to shine, unless he was much mistaken.

"Well, if you don't mind me saying so, sir, I think we managed to leave some key areas of the building untouched."

"Not per the provided blueprints."

"Sure, right, the blueprints will tell you we got everything done, but I think they were missing bits. Important bits." Sorta like Mission Command's report. "Like safes. Lockers. Safe rooms. Like the one I presume was six doors down of the room we hit. Seeing how these type of places should be the primary focus of an operation of this nature, I can't help but feel I've been left out of something. Not that I mind! Clearly this was a well-researched and superbly planned hit, kudos. Still." Clint took a sip of coffee and it was great. "I kinda feel it's more efficient if everyone involved is on the same page. In case something went wrong."

Mission Command, the blonde with the laptop, Scarlett and Natasha all smiled, while Director Fury's lip twitched, like the marble mask masquerading as his face was cracking.

Of course that was when the door to the conference room opened and another man strolled inside. He was wearing black from head to toe, his face was covered with a mask, his dark hair was slicked back into flat skull-cover, and yet it took Clint precisely oh-point-three seconds to know who he was looking at (he had to be honest: the metal fingertips poking out of fingerless gloves on his left hand helped).

The Winter Soldier.

The Winter Soldier himself.

The most fearsome assassin of the past three decades, the name that never made it into the papers, the name known to a total of three people outside the assassin circles, most of which doubted his very existence. That man just walked into the conference room Clint was also in, and took a seat two chairs down.

There was a very real danger of Clint peeing his pants a little in excitement.

"Can I ask a question?" he asked, mostly to cover up the fact that he was mentally looking for a sharpie to get his bow autographed. "Were you waiting for me to talk before you walked in, or was that just a really cool coincidence?"

It was a little disappointing that the living legend didn't have a sense of humor, as Clint's completely legitimate question was met with a blank stare.

"Mask off, please," Fury said, and this time Clint very nearly did pee his pants.

The Winter Soldier was younger than he was!

"Something you want to say, Mr. Barton?"

Clint took a moment to compose himself. "Based on what wasn't in the schematics, I can estimate the primary target was located in the South-East corner of the building. Since Scarlett and I entered from the North and moved only a little to the East, I assume that on top of the USB stick we recovered our function was to distract and draw attention. If who I'm looking at is who I'm looking at, I can only assume this was for show rather than actual need, so… why would you offer me twenty percent over my usual fee for a job you didn't need done in the first place? Not to brag, but I know I'm not cheap." Then upon reflection, he added, "Although if you can afford the Winter Soldier, then perhaps I'm more of a side of fries type of deal. Which, for the record, I do not mind. At all. It's an honor to be the side of fries."

"Full marks, Mr. Barton." Director Fury straightens. "You are correct, we didn't need you on this job. You are here today because Miss Romanoff recommended you for a vacancy."

"Seems like a lot of trouble to go to just for a job interview."

"Our business is… delicate, shall we say. Miss Romanoff's word counts for a lot, but we are, above all, a team. We value professionalism and compatibility above skill, and on that front I'm pleased to say you passed the practical."

Well, that was a surprise. "I feel like you're offending me," Clint said, frowning. "I admit, in some circles I have a reputation as a bit of a slacker, but no one's ever complained about the quality of my work."

Director Fury smiled this time, and it was not wholly unpleasant. "Your skill was never in question, I promise. But we are after other qualities here." He then nodded at Natasha, who stood up smoothly, crossed the room and bent to whisper something in the Winter Soldier's ear. He whispered something back, and followed her out the door without a backward glance.

Out of the corner of his Clint watched Mission Command follow the two with his gaze, and holy shit, he was seriously considering the job for gossip alone, because eat your heart out, Bella, Edward and Jacob.

Clint would not be judged for his literary choices.

"So, what is the job?" he asked, stretching in his seat.

"Our operatives work in pairs, an asset and a handler. We are currently one handler short."

"I can work with Scarlett, sure," Clint said, leaning back in his chair, because that wasn't a difficult conclusion to leap to, not with the way Mission Command was kowtowing to the blonde with the laptop, whose name Clint would learn any minute now. And woe to Natasha, not telling him she was the Winter Soldier's handler. Woe. "When do I start?"

"You're quick on the uptake, Mr. Barton, which will serve you well. But the interview is not yet done."

Behind Clint's back the blonde with the laptop cast her magic spell and lead Mission Command out of the room, leaving Scarlett to conclude the mission report all on her own.

"So what's the rest of it?"

"Half an hour, Mr. Barton. We can go over your record and update your confidentiality agreement and clearance in the meantime, then Ms. Romanoff will rejoin us for the final portion. Pepper, if you please."

Best interview ever it was no longer, Clint thought, when the secretary spread a truly ungodly amount of paper before him. He sailed through them, from the fluff at the top to the iron-clad legalese directly beneath. He went through the contracts and obligations carefully. This was no Apple's terms and conditions, although pains had been taken not to complicate the matters, which meant they must hire a lot of meatheads and they really didn't want to go to trial. Joke was on them, because Clint had just enough legal experience to be able to read the fine print and in this case the fine print was "if you think of crossing us, don't. We will find out" and then the thought ended with an ellipsis. Any other client, and he'd have been out the door already.

Of course, in the broad sense this meant that the joke was on Clint, because all the creepy legalese and Clint's breath still caught a little when he thought about the fact he had been sitting, however briefly, next to the real deal, the one, the only, the legendary Winter Soldier. Not that Mission Command or Scarlett weren't impressive in their own right – and do remember Natasha, Clint – they were! But Clint didn't have their metaphorical picture in his metaphorical locker, or their metaphorical picture on his metaphorical dartboard. Clint was a complicated man, okay?

The Winter Soldier.

There were literal chills, good chills, going down his spine at the mere mention of the name.

He was almost done going through the first round of papers (confidentiality, more confidentiality and then a secrecy agreement) when the woman from earlier, the one who looked like she was cut out from an "order your military personnel online!" catalogue, looked in. "They're ready," she said curtly and departed, and a little later on a disheveled, sleepy-looking man looked in instead. "Wi—I mean Scarlett. It's time for your treatment."

Scarlett raised from her seat with a dreamy looking smile and followed, casting one last look at Clint. "See you later, Mr. Hawk."

"Bye kid!"

Fury straightened and gestured towards the door. "After you, Mr. Barton."

This time the elevator went down, well below the garage, if Clint was any judge, and when the door opened he was hit in the face with… peace. "Is that eucalyptus I smell?"

"Indeed." The man who now stood in their path was ridiculously good looking, and also ridiculously sarcastic. Clint could tell that about a person right away. He was taxing him with the kind of smirk that indicated that he was the guy to go to if you needed your back covered, but that he was also looking for buttons to push, and push them he shall. "Sam Wilson. Head of security. Good to meet you Mr. Barton."

They stepped out onto a balcony, overlooking a truly magnificent spa. Clint felt his jaw drop. "You sure as hell treat your assassins well," he said, watching a couple of kids in sweatpants and t-shirts move through a Tai-Chi routine, wobbling at the change of poses. "What is this, some kind of X-men academy?"

"In a sense," he heard Natasha say behind his back, and he turned to her, only to find himself in the presence of the Winter Soldier again.

And half an hour ago this would have taken his breath away, but this time Clint took a step back. "What the fuck?" he asked, as the kid – this fucking child of, like, twenty? Twenty-five? – smiled at him, bright and soft and pretty. Fucking pretty. "Natasha, what the fuck?"

"He is perceptive," Fury said and Wilson nodded.

"I told you." Natasha turned back to Clint and gestured to the legendary assassin. "Clint, meet Sergeant. Sergeant, this is Clint."

"Hello," the man said. His metal arm suddenly looked really, really out of place, and frankly, everything about him was out of place. The soft smile, the gentle whiff of roses, the lock of hair falling across his forehead. The frankly ridiculously huge eyes, especially.

Natasha squared her shoulders and in the softest voice she said, "Would you like something to eat, Sergeant?"

"Yes, please."

"Cafeteria has your favorite today. Enjoy," Natasha smiled, and the man, whose name was apparently Sergeant, trod towards the wooden stairs leading towards the main floor of whatever the fuck this place was.

"Natasha…"

"This is the Dollhouse, Clint."

Well shit, Clint thought, and stared, open-mouthed, at the woman who was probably his best friend in all the world. "Repeat?"

"You are standing in the Dollhouse. The man you just saw, the Winter Soldier? He is one of our assets. His name is Sergeant."

"He seems a little old to be named Sergeant, I thought it was more of an early 2000s craze, to give kids weird names," he said, but really, that was his mouth running on automatic. The kid looked thirty in full gear, with the blank stare of a sniper able to nail a headshot halfway across a world in the middle of a typhoon. Sweet and soft took away decades, which the Winter Soldier really didn't have to spare. Which, come to think of it… "He's not the real Winter Soldier, right? They say Dollhouse takes people and makes them into whatever they choose. That kid is not the original Winter Soldier."

"I'm more and more impressed with you, Mr. Barton. You're correct, Sergeant is not the first Winter Soldier, and he won't be the last. With any luck the Winter Soldier will be around for a century or so." Fury folded his arms behind his back and moved closer to the railing of the balcony, looking down at the Tai-Chi session. "We provide services. For a price our clients can hire the skills they need, wrapped in a body suiting their personal tastes. We can provide an assassin who won't fail, or a lover who won't see the world past them, who won't remember a single detail of the assignment after it's completed. Unmatched skills tailored to the job and absolute discretion."

"Look, and no offence, but please skip to the part where this is somehow okay for those kids," Clint said. "No judgement, man. I know Natasha wouldn't win an ethics competition anytime soon, but I also know she wouldn't have brought me here if you couldn't give it. Gotta draw the line somewhere, right?"

"Indeed, Mr. Barton." Fury looked behind Natasha and Clint followed his gaze to where Mission Command was emerging from a door obscured by carefully arranged woodwork. Like Sergeant before him, he walked slowly, measuring each step like he had to focus on getting it just right, and there was a gentle smile on his handsome face. Like Sergeant he was barefoot, wearing comfortable sweats and a t-shirt. The blonde woman who'd stuck by his side followed, nudging him in the direction of the stairs, before coming over. She nodded at Natasha and Wilson, and shook Clint's hand.

"Sharon Carter. I'm ex-CIA."

"What brings you to the shady side of the law, then?"

Carter smiled wickedly, and very carefully signed C, I and A. "This really doesn't feel new." Her hands flash a couple more times, practiced and sure. "See you around, Mr. Barton."

"Likewise," said Clint, who bought a kinda nice building in Brooklyn with CIA money, so yeah, not surprises there.

"As I was saying," Fury started, "You are right, we are endorsed by exactly zero Ethics Committees. Still. Our assets are volunteers, who sign up for three-year contracts. In return they receive substantial compensation, plus full benefits and medical care for the rest of their lives. In many cases they are recommended by psychiatrists and neurologists, meaning they are people with a mental illness socially acceptable science cannot help. We do."

"Feeling like a good Samaritan already."

"Samaritans we are not, Mr. Barton. We turn a profit."

"Somehow I am not surprised." Clint caught Natasha's eye, cocked his head. She was here, and yeah: he had no illusions about her morality. No illusions, but no misconceptions, either. Natasha would kill people for a living, and she would spy on countries for a living, but she wouldn't be party to slavery. "This vacancy… what's the job description?"

"You will be responsible for the health and well-being of an asset. Your job will be to monitor them during deployment, ensure the assignment is progressing as scripted and return them home safely. The asset will be programmed to trust you absolutely, obey your every command while in the blank state, and respond to code-words while imprinted with a personality."

"That's a lot of responsibility," Clint said slowly. "And the recruitment process was rather swift."

"Mr. Strucker's contract was terminated prematurely."

"Ah," Clint said.

"Mr. Strucker was… a disappointment."

"So he was terminated."

"He chose to violate the trust we put in him. But you should know that he was by no means a typical case. Most handlers depart with a generous pension and a heartfelt recommendation to a business of their choice."

"I've met retired handlers," Natasha added. "So have you, incidentally. Sam was Captain's handler until recently. He got promoted to head of security two months ago." Wilson offered a bow in Clint's direction. "Besides, the food here is amazing, and we are free to use the amenities after the assets' bedtime. There're masseuses and a fry cook you're going to love."

Well. This seemed like a nice, cushy job for a man of a certain age. "I'd like to meet my charge, then."

"Pleased to hear that. Dr. Banner?"

"We're ready," the sleepy-looking man said. Scarlett was standing right behind him, wearing a very similar set of sweats and a t-shirt as the first two… assets, although her expression was that of a bored interest and faint amusement. One of her hands was propped on her hip and Clint noticed the dark nail polish has been carefully removed. Her hair was a little damp, falling over her shoulders in an auburn wave, and her face cleared of makeup. "If you'd come this way." Clint looked over his shoulder, but it seemed that Fury and Wilson were staying put, while Dr. Banner lead the way into the door behind the wood panels.

"Bruce acted as her handler while we looked for a replacement," Natasha told him under her breath. "He is a resident physician here. And… brace yourself."

"Is it going to be bad?"

"No, you're about to meet Tony."

And indeed, meeting Tony was a revelation.

"Always good to see you, Natasha," said the heir to the Stark fortune, fiddling with a phone. "Changing things up, are we?"

"Moral support this time."

"You know this is a delicate process, I can't have too many people here while I work. People's brains are at stake."

"You can manage with one more, I believe in you."

So Clint watched Scarlett lie down in a weird chair with a glowing headrest, and a kind of aureole around it. He watched the chair recline and he watched Scarlett tense, clutching the armrests. He felt his own hands tense in sympathy. But then the chair straightened, and the girl sitting in it blinked, no trace of pain on her face, and no trace of Scarlett on her face, either.

"Did I sleep long?" she asked, turning towards Tony, not apprehensive, not scared, not… nothing.

"Just a little while," Tony told her. She lifted her head and looked around.

"Should I leave now?"

"If you wish."

The girl stood up slowly, and made her way out of the room, sparing no glance at anyone, not even Dr. Banner.

"So that was our little Witch," Stark said, pulling up a long file onto the screen and stroking a couple of random keys. "Cute kid. Anything out of the ordinary?"

"Other than everything?" Clint checked his watch and started when a disembodied voice replied that no, nothing, and that he really objected to being sprung on people. "Nat?"

"Tony has a robot butler, without the robot part."

"He is called JARVIS," Stark said proudly. "He is the crowning achievement in artificial intelligence. I should get a Nobel peace prize."

"Still willing to take the offer?" Natasha asked, hands folded across her chest, a small smile on her mouth, while Stark and his robot butler got into an argument over the criteria of Nobel peace prize. Dr. Banner merely shook his head and begged off, citing duties elsewhere.

"Sure," Clint said. This seemed like a nice, peaceful gig. Something relaxing to do while he awaited retirement. And then, because he had a feeling he better learn fast, he added, "That chat, that felt practiced."

"There's a series of scripts you will have to learn, to respond to assets' basic needs."

"Woah! No one said I'm gonna have to memorize things! I did not sign up for this!"

Stark snorted at that. Natasha snorted too. JARVIS obligingly displayed a wall of text, to Clint's feigned despair. And that, barring some more paperwork, presentations and reading sessions, was that.


	2. On Patterns

The balcony was indubitably his favorite spot. There was not even a little contest. There was the balcony and there was everything else. Well, maybe cafeteria competed a little, put up a brave little fight, because woah, Nat was not wrong, the food they served there was unbelievable. And Scott. Good god. The things that tiny man could do to a potato, while still meeting the criteria of healthy eating. But all the same, Clint liked places from which he could see the shape of things, and however spacious the cafeteria, it was too intimate to deliver.

"Hey, did you know that the dolls move in patterns?"

"What?" Natasha joined him at the banister, leaned over and stared intently.

"You gotta be here for about an hour, but there's definitely something. Like, at first I thought it's random, right? They don't think, don't really group together, there's no Mean Doll clique."

"It's necessary for their minds to recoup."

"Yes, yes. I read the presentation. It's not what I meant. Like, take Captain America." He was officially called Captain, for some ungodly reason, but Clint like to personalize. "He has his favorite spots, like the drawing table. But he almost never takes the same route to get there."

"Where is the pattern, then?"

"The routes all take him through certain points. Very… particular points."

"Do I smell a conspiracy?" she asked playfully, handing over a fresh paczek on a porcelain plate.

"Nat, people literally come here to disappear. There is a mind-wiping machine not thirty feet from where we're standing. If there's no conspiracy it's because it is the conspiracy."

"Fair point. So, what are the spots?"

"There's five of them. All have perfect sightlines."

The small smile slid off of Natasha's face. "Clint…"

"He was military, wasn't he. Before." Honestly, Clint wasn't even surprised. The man looked like a posterboy for Uncle Sam Wants You, if someone thought to make Uncle Sam not look like a white-haired Abraham Lincoln at Gay Pride. And it wasn't even a huge surprise that he ended up here. Clint knew a thing or two about PTSD. He was less affected, presumably for the same reason he could now shoot people for money, but he'd seen kids eat their guns. So he was sorta glad Cap's getting help, even if it's going to cost him a few extra years of service and watching his carbs.

Good god above, Scott's paczki had to be a cardinal sin.

"Even if he was, dolls aren't supposed to retain anything. Not in their blank state."

"Can't erase a soul, Nat. Some things just run too deep."

She let out a little huff, like she sometimes did in the middle of missions. "Like military training?"

"Maybe. Maybe he's looking for something." And the thing was, the moment he said it, off-hand and inhaling the powdered sugar, was the moment he realized that was exactly what it was. Cap was looking for something. He revisited old haunts, paused in prime locations to review the scene, looked and looked and looked again, before the white noise in his head made him move away. "Huh. Maybe the tech-wizard is not as effective as he thinks he is."

"Don't talk too loud. You're supposed to be settling in, not noticing patterns where there should be none."

True. But then Natasha wasn't really surprised by the discovery, was she? "Eh, well. Not really my style."

"Tell me about the others."

Fair enough. He'd started with Cap, as Cap was the one in sight, but it wasn't like he was focusing. "Witch hugs the left wall when she walks. Which makes sense, as right is her dominant hand, but that's only when walking or eating. While training she's fine with being in close quarters from whatever side. She always pauses by the cage with the grey parrot. Not that she's alone, the parrot is something. If you ask her a question she'd look to the side, slightly above eye-level." Clint bit into the dough and discovered rose preserves. He seriously doubted Shangri-La was welcomed with more gratitude. "I'm telling you, Nat. Those kids have seen shit."

"What about Sergeant?"

"Ah, he's interesting."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. He is random. Completely."

Natasha raised an eyebrow. "You spend half an hour discussing patterns in the blank dolls and now you tell me Sergeant is random."

"I know," Clint said. "It's weird."

Natasha stared at him, the way only she knew how. "You don't like it here."

"I love it here," Clint replied truthfully. "The food is great, the swimming pool is just warm enough, and who wouldn't want to spend their days surrounded by beautiful people."

"But?"

"It's a little unsettling. You know how _Final Fantasy: Spirits Within_ was unwatchable? It's like that."

"Bring it up with Fury. They were in a pinch and needed someone trustworthy, I recommended you. If you want to be replaced, Fury will make it happen."

Clint laughed at that. "No, really, come on. Don't do this. It's like a mystery, I want to figure it out!"

"Well, that's going to have to wait, Sherlock." Tony – and it was downright unsettling how swiftly Stark became Tony in his head, it took Romanoff years to move to Natasha – appeared at their side with a tablet in his hands. "We have an engagement. Or rather you have an engagement. With this beauty!"

Clint looked at the glowing, translucent panels, and very cautiously said: "It's pretty?"

"I know! I mean, god. Look how the neural feedback reinforces the impulses from the frontal cortex, good grief. This lady is going to have the computing power of, well, me. It's going to be amazing."

"That's going to be her brain?" Clint asked, intrigued. Mostly by the glowing wiggles; he didn't have the background to properly appreciate the science behind them. He was plenty smart, he'd gladly tell anyone who asked. Not educated, mind. But smart. "What's she going to be?"

"All the details got forwarded to your mailbox."

"Aw, mailbox? Can't you just give me the gist? I read on the way!"

"Unbelievable! I have spent hours crafting this personality! Hours! Do you know how she's going to feel about green-tea ice-cream? Because I do! And you want me to condense the infinite complexities into a sound-bite?"

"Well, now that I know there's zero chance I'll have time to read it… yes?"

"Unbelievable! Go find Witch and be in my workroom in fifteen."

Down below Natasha's Sergeant settled by the Lego table. Some minutes later Captain got bored with drawing and wandered by, pausing at his customary spots, before joining in on the block-building fun. The structures coming together under their fingertips were nothing special. Nothing a determined six year old couldn't come up with on their off-day, and abandoned just as swiftly. Still, Clint liked watching them build things. Captain more than Sergeant, mind, Clint might not have been artistically minded, but even he appreciated sorting the blocks by color, where Sergeant just slapped them together anyway they fit. Captain built structures.

And that should have been a clue, too.

*****

"Hey man," Wilson said. "You mind if I join you?"

Clint mumbled his assent through a mouthful of divine pulled pork. Seriously. So good. Only a pig who lived a good piggie life went on to become this pulled pork. It was glorious. "What can I do for you? And please don't say stop eating."

"Wouldn't dream of it." Wilson set his own tray on the table and waved. "Romanoff, Carter!"

Natasha set her own tray on the table – substantially less pork and more greens, but then her figure was a symphonic poem whereas Clint's was maybe a good sonnet, so – and sat down, closely followed by Carter. "Sam. Don't you get food delivered to your fancy office?"

"Believe it or not, food is actually better in here." Sam shoved a mouthful of the pork in his mouth and closed his eyes. "Amazing. It's probably the music."

"Getting lonely in your high castle?"

"Eh, it's okay. I have the fanciest desk imaginable." Sam chews for a moment. "So I have something to share."

"Oh?"

"We had an incident. A security… I'm going to use the word thing."

"A security thing?"

"Captain's file was accessed from outside."

Carter straightens in her seat. "We were hacked?"

"No. The access raised no flags, everything seemed to be above board. Except for one thing: we don't know who did it. They used an unknown account. Authorized, but completely anonymous."

"That's not good," Clint said.

Natasha frowned at Wilson. "How do you know, if it raised no flags?"

"I happen to be behind on procedures, and was reviewing cyber-security at the time," Wilson said. "So it's… okay, it's probably no big deal. But it happened."

"No data on the dolls can make it outside," Carter said. "Dollhouse security is one thing, but dolls are still vulnerable even after they complete their contract. There are configuration specs in their files."

Clint stares at her, open-mouthed. "Are you saying they can be activated again?"

"I don't know the details." Carter was toying with her fork. "I did a couple of courses on neurology in college. Tony… is not a great teacher, but I did get this. For a brain to support imprinting, it needs specific architecture. This is done during the first session with a new doll. The original brain scans are recorded and stored, and then the brain is reconfigured into the blank slate, the doll. Basic functions, no patterns, nothing. The imprints are constructed with that architecture as baseline, which is why an imprint can be so easily reused on different dolls."

"What happens when they need their own personalities back?"

Carter shook her head. "The original imprints will take, the architecture is flexible and the original is always the original. But once a doll is made, it's more susceptible to similar kinds of interference."

Clint frowned into his pork. "How much more susceptible?"

"They would need to have the tech, which is a Dollhouse security issue, and in order to keep the doll safe, also the calibration details."

"So if someone gained access to a doll's file…" Natasha said slowly, toying with her forkful of cherry tomatoes.

"They could use it to wipe and imprint the doll without risking hurting their brain."

"And we know someone from the outside accessed Captain's file."

Wilson raised a hand at that. "I could find no evidence they got into the actual imprint files. Just his medical and psych evaluations."

"So someone from the outside is monitoring one of our dolls?" Natasha stared at Wilson. "Carter I get, but why tell me and Clint, and not the other handlers? Why not bring it up with Fury?"

"Nothing actually happened. The access was fully authorized, I just didn't recognize the account. And why you? Well. To be honest I've included Clint because I know you two are friends." Wilson took a sip of his organic rhubarb lemonade and took a deep breath. "I looked a little further, and it seems that this account was used to monitor Captain multiple times, usually about once a month, from the moment he came here. Mostly medical files, like I said, and nothing that would warrant suspicion. Other than the obvious, you know. I'd have ignored it, probably. Except for one thing." Wilson winced and took a sip of his smoothie. "The very first login predates Captain's arrival by about three weeks, and they went through five active asset files, until they got to Sergeant's. Which, pretty obviously, implies to me they were looking for him."

Natasha sat up straight, all pretense of demureness gone and forgotten. Whelp, you do not threaten, however obliquely, those in Natasha's care. You go get them, girl, I've got your flower!

"What kind of information they have now?" she asked, her voice icy.

"Not much. The personal files are encrypted with everything we have. Even Fury can't access them directly, there's a three-tier security system. I have a part of the code, Fury and Tony have a part. The imprint structures and original personalities are all offline, each one is stored on two separate hard discs, in two physical locations, so there's little issue there. I mean."

"Little issue?" Natasha prompts.

"The imprint patterns can be recreated from the brain scans," Carter said, white as a sheet and Wilson nodded grimly.

"Nothing has been downloaded to my knowledge, and I don't think it's easy. Whoever tried would need access to several full-brain scans, and we just don't do them routinely. Something needs to go wrong first."

"Why haven't you raised this with Fury?" Natasha asked, and this time she was glaring.

"For a moment there I was almost surprised, but then I remembered I work for the Dollhouse, so." Clint took a bite of his divine pulled pork sandwich and groaned. "Amazing. If this place goes under, Nat, you are helping me kidnap the cook."

"Look, it's not that—" Wilson started and went a little red in the face. "This place is giving me paranoia. No. I want to have something real to bring to him. Something that's not 'a fully authorized account is monitoring one of our dolls, I wanna look into one of Dollhouse's potential backers'. I imagine that will go over great."

"Looking into clients or backers without Fury's backing is going to be risky."

"Which is why I don't want to do that. But I would like to have a legitimate reason to ask Fury to look into someone important enough to have an anonymous account in our networks."

"What were you thinking?"

"Carter – is there any reason at all to suspect Captain is being messed with outside? Anything that would force us to do a full brain-scan? Your reports have been glowing, and Tony said basically he has nothing to work with, Cap's head is structured like a dream."

"You took it up with Tony?"

"I told him I wanted to brain-scan all dolls, as periodic back-up. He spent three hours explaining to me in detail why full brain-scans are not a routine procedure and shouldn't be taken lightly. This is also how I got this helpful chart." Wilson set his datapad on the table and brought up a chart that indeed ended with "yes, brain scan is recommended" and "yeah, no, rethink your science". "This is what I need from you, Carter. Any of these strike a nerve?"

Carter took the pad and scrolled through the checklist. "No erratic behavior. Some repeated actions," at this point Natasha shot Clint a significant look, "but nothing out of the ordinary. It's probably muscle memory. He is peaceful and cordial with staff and other dolls." She scrolled to the bottom and looked up. "He's been drawing a lot."

"Or, we could ask him," Clint suggested.

"Excuse me?"

"He's still a person, right? He can answer a couple of questions."

"I won't be able to help much. Dolls don't have the same ticks as normal people." Natasha peered deep into the soul of her dinner, and came up empty, but Clint actually found that to be good news.

"That sounds like a fair test to me, if Nat gets anything out of him, we know there's trouble. If not, we're cool."

"When do you want to do this?" Carter asked and Wilson smiled humorlessly.

"Tonight. Fury's returning tomorrow, if we find out anything tonight, I can talk to him then. And if we get nothing, he will never know. So, win-win."

*****

Not that wandering after dark was something Clint never did, but he liked to think of himself as not a creep, so heading to the pods in which the dolls slept was uncomfortable. But then a hunch made him take a detour for the drawing table. "An art critic, how is that my life," he muttered, as he stepped on a crayon, a handful of which was always lying around. The drawing table was for dolls to maintain; a compulsion to put things back to where they came from was part of the package. Completed drawings were stored on a particular shelf, and were removed when the supplies were replenished. It was a good thing it was a slow week, Clint thought as he took the handful of papers and started leafing through them.

House, sky, a stick person, something that had to be Fury – someone needs to tell that man to stay out of the doll floor, he was scary – and finally a scary-competent rendition of Carter, which garnered some uneasy looks when their little band gathered. "He ain't half bad," Clint said, encouragingly.

"Flattering." Wilson took the paper out of Clint's hands. "You know, they can program a doll to be an artist. Imprint comes with a full package, muscle memory and all."

"Can they program the artist out of the doll?" Clint asked philosophically, because really? For all the mumbo-jumbo, people weren't computers.

"Technically, the blank state shouldn't allow for anything too complex." Wilson considered the drawing carefully, taking stock of each line.

"Carter's pretty face begs to differ."

"Let's wake him and ask," Carter said, taking the paper. "Huh. This is pretty good. And accurate. If flattering."

"Your face is supposed to be his safe place," Natasha said. "No surprise he'd resort to drawing it, and drawing it pretty. Let's go."

The dolls slept in what was known as pods. A bedding of memory foam and Egyptian cotton, sunk about two and a half feet into the flooring, covered with milky glass, which slid closed each night. There were five pods per dormitory, arranged so that the dolls slept with their heads towards a central pillar. Clint found it vaguely spooky at first viewing, and he found it spooky now. And you know what else he found spooky? When Carter opened the pod and found it empty of their errant doll. Instead a small pile of paper lay peaking from under the pillow, taunting them with the absence of a head. Wait, ick, wrong mental image.

"Fuck," Wilson said.

"What is that?" Natasha slid into the pod, and lifted a pillow. "Well," she said slowly. "That's…"

There were drawings. About a dozen sheets of paper, with one face on them. Natasha lined them up, one by one, on the floor beside the pod, silent. Until she could no longer be that. "Shit," she said.

Most of them were no more alarming than the one of Carter. Sergeant was smiling from the creamy-white surface of paper, like he had no worries, and in fact he probably didn't, because the t-shirt and bare feet on the occasional full-body portrait suggested this was a case of paint what you know. But there were other drawings, too. The Winter Soldier. Sergeant in a smart suit, looking like a million dollars in unmarked hundred-dollar bills, a self-confident smirk on his lips. Not quite Sergeant, impossibly young, in a Led Zeppelin t-shirt, with an ice-cream cone in his hand. Far in the distance there was a Ferris wheel, and a pier, thought these were doodles and hints rather than actual places.

On the yet another hand, if Clint squinted, the shaky lines implied Coney Island. And probably seventeen other places on the East Coast alone, but Coney Island was the first that sprung to his mind. And look, if he squinted really hard, those haphazard lines almost, almost looked like the word "cyclone".

"We have to report this to Tony," Carter said. "If the wipes are incomplete it could impact his mental health later on. An imprint cannot be done unless it's on a blank mind, it could damage—wait. That's—" she turned one of the papers over and held up a sheet with a portrait of an elderly woman. The color was applied pretty indiscriminately, otherwise she was the hippest old lady on the planned, but clearly still recognizable, given how Natasha inhaled sharply.

Clint looked at her curiously, head tilted, but it was obvious he was the only one who had no idea what was going on. "Who's that, a client?"

"That's Margaret Carter," she said. "She was a CEO of SHIELD before Pierce."

"So Captain knows Margaret Carter. Any relation, by the way?" he asked, turning to Carter, who surprised him with a nod.

"She's my great-aunt."

Clint didn't really find a witty one-liner to spout, so he settled for, "Can we officially declare this a conspiracy now?"

"What?"

"Come on! We have a doll with obvious malfunctions, who remembers things from the past."

"These could be from assignments."

"Not this one," Carter said. "Aunt Peggy wouldn't hire a doll for her own pleasure, and this looks way too sentimental to be done for other reasons. And she wasn't assassinated, either," she added as an afterthought.

"Wilson?" Clint asked, which provoked a slow, unsure nod.

"Let's… wake him up."

And it was at this point that the four of them were struck by one very important thing.

"Where…"

But Natasha was already moving towards the next pod. "Do you really need to ask?"

The glass slid back and yup. There he was, their handsome blond Captain, sleeping peacefully in his – clearly – Sergeant's arms. Or vice-versa. Political correctness was hard.

"Yep," Clint said. "We got ourselves a problem."

Carter slowly lowered herself to her knees and leaned forward, to place a hand on Captain's shoulder. "Wake up," she said. "Captain."

Clint was half expecting drama, but no: the doll opened his eyes, and blinked at her in confusion.

"It's time for your treatment," Carter said, and for a second Clint was certain they'd have to fight him for it, because his frankly ridiculous arms tightened their hold, bringing Sergeant closer, impossibly close. But then he let go and clambered out of the pod to stand beside them, hair mussed, soft platitude on his features.

"I enjoy my treatments," he slurred, wrapping his arms around his shoulders. Down in the pod Sergeant curled up, chasing the missing warmth, and snuffled into the pillow.

"Sam, wake Tony."

"Gotcha." Wilson pulled a cell out of his pocket and not twenty seconds later rolled his eyes. "Wake is such a big word. Let's go."

 

To the surprise of no one who'd ever met Tony, they found him bouncing around his workroom with a song in his heart and a screwdriver in his mouth, which he had the good grace to spit out before speaking. "Good evening, what can I do you for?"

"You tell me," Carter said, dropping the stack of drawings on the desk, only to have them scooped up.

"No," Captain said, cradling them to his chest. "They are mine."

"I'll just take that as an explanation, shall I?" Tony set his screwdriver aside and scratched his head. "This is unusual."

Captain returned his stare blankly, smoothing the papers on his marble chest. "They are mine," he said again, slowly, hesitantly. "I made them. They are mine."

"I won't take them away." Tony, in a fit of uncharacteristic gentleness, reached out and stopped a few feet away from the Captain. "I just want to see. Please show me the drawings."

It wasn't the instant, if languid obedience Clint had come to expect from the dolls. Captain took a step back and carefully arranged the dozen sheets of paper on the cluttered surface of what probably was a desk, deep down. "They are mine," he repeated, and his voice sounded hard this time. Definitely not doll-like.

"Yeah. Oh boy."

"Any recommendations?"

"Well… This is not exactly orthodox."

"We're skipping the 'it's impossible' stage?" Clint raised both hands and took a step back when Natasha and Tony looked at him in sync. "I'm just saying, this whole mind-meld shtick is your baby, shouldn't you be indignant or something?"

"I'm a scientist, nerd. Theories are slaves to facts, and fact is, this happened. Denying it would be a waste of breath." Tony bent lower over the papers and squinted. "Is that Peggy my eyes see?"

"Yes."

"They are mine," Captain reminded him.

"Yes, yes."

"I made them!"

"I'm not touching anything!" Then, as though struck by an epiphany, Tony straightened. "Captain. Who is this?" He pointed to the drawing of Peggy and Captain faltered.

"It's a picture."

"Who is the woman in the picture?"

"It's my picture."

"Yes, we established that, several times now. Who is the picture of?"

Captain stared at him like he suddenly spoke Mandarin. "I made it."

"Okay, half a million dollar question then. Who is this?"

This time the answer was immediate. "Sergeant."

"And who is this?"

And Captain frowned, even though Tony was pointing at a sketch of a face identical to the one before. He opened his mouth once, twice, and then his face crumpled. "I made it."

"Oh, I'm not even going to tell you how much trouble we're in right now." Tony turned away from the table and Captain immediately started piling the papers together with shaking hands.

"You're taking this well," Natasha said, and Clint mentally circled to the first point. Tony seemed giddy rather than concerned.

"Oh, this is terrible, I won't lie, though I will spare you the neuroscientific details. But this is science, and science has Chinese as its mother tongue."

"Pretty sure that's math."

"No, Chinese. Crisis, opportunity, you know?"

"What do you want to do?" Natasha asked, and her voice took a low, dangerous tone. With good reason, because Tony was pawing at the completely inconspicuous wall behind his computer screen.

"Wilson, get in here. We are going to have a chat with Mr. Tall and Chiseled."

Carter sucked in a breath. "You want to imprint him with his original personality?"

"Indeed."

"That's against every single protocol!"

"Again: I'm sparing you the science. This," Tony waved his hands to Captain and his drawings, "is way out of the norm, but it is not unheard of. You remember that bit earlier? Well, I did a scan, and his neurokinetic are firing up, meaning whatever was left over from the wipe is making its way back. Which in itself is not worrying, it happens when a doll doesn't get imprinted regularly, and Cap hasn't been out in weeks, after the STD scare. Blanking out a brain can't be done too zealously, for obvious reasons, so if a doll has a flash of visuals, we do not panic." Tony pointed to the screen on which JARVIS was flashing a large, friendly "Do Not Panic" sign. "The problem is, that the flashes can be anything, memories, movies, imprints. They are usually harmless and don't last. But, they are also why no one can stay a doll indefinitely and that's why we have schedules and protocols. Even a blank mind can go bonkers when you flash it too hard.

"What is worrying and unusual is that he looks at pictures he himself made and sees two people where there should be one. Okay? Dolls recognize one another. Between and during imprints. Sometimes dolls even recognize clients, though we don't like to advertise that, for obvious reasons. But Cap here took a good long look at a picture of his buddy-blank and wrong neurons fired. And that's bad. A flash of random visuals is nothing; facial recognition is something quite different."

"Which means what?" Wilson asked absently, typing out the tail end of his passcodes.

"Which means I want to see if this is a case of true love."

Wilson paused with his hand on the keypad behind the wooden panel, but the damage was done; he'd already inputted the last digits. "You're just curious!"

"That's what I've been saying this whole time!" Tony shouldered him aside and in a few moments he had a cassette, about an inch thick, in his hands. "Sharon, in the chair. Him, not you. And relax. There's a reason I don't need Fury to authorize checking out the original personality."

Carter didn't seem convinced, but she got Captain in the chair and then, several long minutes later…

"Hey hey," Tony said, leaning over the prone doll. "Are you with us?"

"Dr. Stark."

"Indeed! Do you know where you are?"

"The Dollhouse." The man sat up and clenched his fists. "What day is it?"

"Aren't you impatient."

"What. Day."

"It's 2016. June nineteenth," Clint piped up and the man formerly known as Cap stared at him.

"It's been less than two years."

"Do you recognize this woman?" Carter stepped forward before Tony could open his mouth again, with the picture of Carter Senior brandished at eye-level. She hit bullseye, considering the good Captain shriveled and locked up like an uptight mollusk.

"Why?"

"You've drawn her in the interim," Tony piped up. "We need to know if that's a lucky coincidence, or if your brain is breaking down. Standard medical procedure."

Captain fixed Tony and then his handler with an unfriendly gaze, but relented. "That's Margaret Carter. She was a CEO of SHIELD Inc. We're friends."

"Be it far from me to discourage intergenerational friendships, I have a better question: who is this guy?"

And the Captain – because screw it, Clint found the moniker fitting as fuck – visibly flinched and looked away. "His name is Bucky. James Barnes. He's… he was my friend."

Clint caught Natasha's eye and felt not in the slightest bit bad rising his hands and making the quotation marks in the air while mouthing the word "friend". That boy, he decided privately, was either getting it on with Mr. Tumnus deep in the closet, and was in for a rude awakening, or was the king of understatement.

"Where did you get that?" Captain asked meanwhile, reaching for the drawing.

"You were sketching him while you were under," Clint supplied. "Over and over. Seems like it's something you got over, eh?"

"He went missing on his twentieth birthday," Captain looked down at his knees and sighed. "I… I didn't take it well."

Given Fury's insistence that this was really just a hospital for sad puppies, who need all the help they can get, no wonder he ended up here. Which, of course, was only a half of the very good question. Clint caught Natasha's eye again at attempted communicating "now what? Do we tell him?" with his eyebrows, but he was spared the necessity, because in that moment Captain looked up and his eyes went wide.

"Bucky?"

The other doll was standing in the door, feet bare and hair tousled.

"We should sleep," he said, very softly, avoiding looking in Natasha's direction. "There's no light. Mustn't be awake when there's no light."

"Buck, what…?"

Captain crossed the room in three long steps and took Sergeant's hands in both of his, rubbing the metal with a thumb. "Buck, what is this, Bucky—" And then his features hardened. "What happened to you? What have they done to you?"

"He's getting agitated," Sam muttered. "Carter—"

"What do you want me to do, it's the original, I can't influence the original!"

"Calm him down!"

Yeah, no shit! Captain's eyes were blazing, and Clint, for all his questionable life experience, wouldn't want to see that in a back-alley.

Thankfully, Tony stepped up to the plate with both hands held up at shoulder level. "Okay, okay, let's all take a step back and breathe. Natasha, get Sergeant into the chair."

"What?"

"Excuse me, who is the authority on neuro-imprints? Me or you?" Stark was rummaging in the wall compartment, until he came up with another disc. "Closure is the ticket. Cap's twisting inside, we give him closure, everything mellows down. Slightly ahead of schedule, but we are nothing if not flexible. Okay? Okay."

"What is that?" Captain asked, stood firmly between Sergeant and the rest of the world. "What's that going to do to him?"

"Relax, Cap. This is your pal. Right here." Tony shook the little disc. "You said you know where you are, right? Well, this is what we do. This is you, this is him." Captain's cassette detached from the chair with a hiss and a pop, and Tony pushed the other disc in, secured it with the latch. "Do you want to talk to your friend? Because that's how you talk to your friend."

No part of this was going to happen without a struggle. Captain clenched his fists and relaxed them, and then he nodded. "If something's wrong with him—"

"Hey, we get paid a lot to make sure you're happy and healthy as shrimps."

"Clams," Wilson supplied.

"Happy and healthy. Nothing good will come out of me screwing you. For me, I mean."

"Sergeant," Natasha intoned once Captain nodded. "It's time for your treatment."

And he went. Just like Captain before him he tensed, moaned, and… became.

"Fuck."

"Bucky?"

The now ex-doll blinked at Captain in a daze. He wet his lips, frowned, and then he said, "Who the hell is Bucky?"

"Uh huh. Plot-twist," Tony said into the ensuing silence, even as Captain went white.

"What? No, you're Bucky, your name is James Barnes, you—"

"Pal, you might wanna look at me again," Sergeant said with a sardonic twist to his mouth. Clint didn't think he would be friends with this dude. "My name is Brock Rumlow."

"No, that's—you can't be!"

"Watch me."

"No," Captain said, taking a step back and looked up at Tony, his eyes blazing. "You lied to me!"

Hurray for confirming hunches, because that was definitely a fighting stance he was dropping into, and the handle of a chair he was reaching for was definitely going to be used as a weapon. Luckily Clint barely had time to tense, before something small and flashy crossed the room, hitting Captain in the chest. He went down, folding up like a particularly fucked up origami piece. Clint turned his head to see Sam with his hand still extended, his thumb on something that looked like a laser pointer.

"Wow, you people know how to party." Sergeant – Rumlow – was watching the unconscious body on the floor with a raised eyebrow. "So, can I get a phone or something? I take it my three years are up?"

And he didn't even blink when Natasha told him no, and that he had to go under again.

"This here won't affect my payout, will it?" he just asked, nodding at the floor, where Carter was gently pulling Captain into the safe position.

"Not at all," Natasha said in the special, soothing doll-wrangling voice.

"So that went well," Clint said, once Brock was laid back to take a nap, woke up pleasant and polite and all too eager to lend his muscles to the cause of getting Captain into the chair, where he was gently roused and then erased. "That went so well."

Carter and Natasha gently lead their charges back to their pods, where they were hopefully ensuring separate accommodation and no more funny business, while Tony hmmed and stared at his pretty pictures.

"At least we now know why the dude is here. Hope you can do something to help him."

"Yeah," Tony said, waving the hand that wasn't stroking the touchpad connected to his computer.

Clint didn't stay to watch that unfold. He got a yeah already, which, coming from Tony-on-the-case was plenty.

*****

He was out on an assignment that was hurting his brain a little: Witch's name was Melissa Kraczkowski, and she was a sweet, doe-eyed neurosurgeon, hired by a prominent American patriarch, whose name Clint was legally prohibited from thinking, to perform an extremely delicate procedure on his wife. She was outfitted in pink, floral dress for the initial meeting, and her delicate makeup had faint pink undertones, so needless to say the big, rotund, rugged all-American manly man was not happy with the assignment.

"I paid a lot of money for the best neurosurgeon and you people sent me this child," he hissed, once everyone involved was out of earshot.

Clint had to sigh at that, and also scratch his chin with a Blackberry (brilliant neurosurgeons had PAs to keep track of their schedules, which helped Clint a lot as far as staying in the room went). "Sir. All due respect. I'm sure you read the introductory presentation. Dr. Kraczkowski has the lifetimes of three exceptional neurosurgeons in her brain, complete with muscle-memory. There is no one better on this planet to handle this operation."

"She looks—"

Honestly, if Clint had a penny for—actually, no, ten bucks, if he had ten bucks for every time that came up, he'd be able to afford the _Simpsons_ on DVD. Which he could anyway, because the Dollhouse always paid his salary on time, but still.

"It doesn't matter what she looks like," Clint said firmly, staring down into the operating theatre, as Melissa directed the team to their positions. "She is a neurosurgeon now." A neurosurgeon with the nimble fingers of a violinist (no mistaking those callouses). Really, he thought as he watched the woman carefully scrub her delicate hands with sterilizing soap, Tony can tout his skill and genius, but strip them down to the base and the body is not without its own brain, its own memory. Can't have one playing against the other.

 

The operation was in its fifth hour when his phone twitched faintly against his leg.

"Yeah?"

"Sergeant is being transferred," Natasha said on the other end in that special tone of voice which sounded calm and controlled on the outside, but really only existed to mask mounting panic.

"What?"

"Stay where you are and make no sudden moves. We just got a request from headquarters. Apparently the LA Dollhouse had trouble with recruitment and they are short on male dolls."

"Shit—Well, at least you'll get some sunshine? We all love New York, but the weather here…"

"I'm not going. Fury said he'll keep me on the retainer, until they recruit a new doll."

Well, that sure as fuck couldn't have been a coincidence, Clint thought. "What a crazy random happenstance," he said cheerily.

"Thank you, Billy. Please don't drive the spork into your leg."

Bless Natasha for introducing him to Dr. Horrible. "I'm sorry," he added more formally. "We are proceeding according to schedule, which means we are still two hours away. I'll be back in two days." Sooner. Maybe he could leave once Witch had fallen asleep. They were contracted to stay for the whole week, if the patient woke up on schedule, longer if she didn't.

"It's okay. They are coming for him tomorrow evening."

"Fuck."

"You'd better pray the client is not standing right behind you," Natasha said in the tone which invariably had the smirk, the one perfect quirk of her lips, on its tail.

"Nah, he's gone to pray, or something. I'm all good."

"Finish the assignment," Natasha said, which in Nat-speak was a clear and obvious "hurry back."

Any other assignment, and Clint probably would. Something was fishy, he could feel it in his bones. If it was a question of walking in and cutting a creep's fuck-fiesta, he'd have done it, no question. Doll's mental health and all. But Witch had her fingers carefully wrapped around a tumor in a woman's brain, one false move and the next best guy to contact was all the way in Seattle.

 _Keep me in the loop_ , he texted and returned to staring down into the OR.

Literally three days after they woke the guy up from science-induced oblivion because another guy was having an episode the first guy is getting transferred to the other side of the country? Clint was not buying it.

 _Is Tony running system checks?_ he texted Nat not three minutes later.

 _Focus on the assignment_ , is her reply. _Sam is on it._


	3. A Lesson in Squiggles

As luck would have it, Clint did get back on schedule; precisely seven days on the dot after he helped Melissa Kraczkowski get out of the chair, he was helping Witch slide out.

"Tell me everything," he demanded once the doll was safely away, and Natasha, Carter and Wilson lined up in Stark's workshop. "And do not think I didn't notice Captain shadowing the door like a lovesick puppy."

"They took Sergeant," Natasha said. "Two days ago a couple of guys showed up. They had all the necessary authorization codes and signatures, they imprinted Brock back, politely explained what's going on. Rumlow consented to the move and signed the contract amendment, so Fury approved the transfer. They packed up the cassette with the original personality – the duplicate followed separately – and imprinted Sergeant with an actor who's got an audition for some blockbuster."

"Wait, wait – they imprinted him for the journey?"

"It's protocol," Tony said without looking up from his computer. "The imprint is so that the doll stays complacent without raising any suspicions in transit."

"Okay, so it's all above board, all the protocols were followed, yadda yadda yadda." Clint bit his fingernails and looked at the other four in turn. "Why does it feel like something is off?"

"Other than the fact that Captain would only budge from the balcony if Sharon personally escorted him away? I mean, shit." Wilson shook his head. "Nothing is wrong, per se. Just… it's not normal. Even if Cap is faulty, and he did the duckling thing and imprinted on Sergeant, it still doesn't explain why he keeps staring at the door after numerous wipes!"

"Cap's not entirely unhinged."

"Excuse me?"

Tony held out a pad and points to several layers of squiggles. "Look at this. Took me the whole night. And a week besides. Blond, buff and beefy is not faulty."

"What do the squiggles mean?" Natasha asked, when it became obvious Tony was awaiting applause.

"Ugh, learn some neurology, will you." Tony swipes and every screen in the room lights up. "JARVIS, please highlight the delta pattern, will you?"

Some squigglies lit up bright, others darkened, and Clint found himself looking at a very attractive screen-saver. "Cute," he said. "What of it?"

"Compare left and right screen. Do you see?"

"One is Mac and the other PC?"

Carter was frowning. "It's like… the one on the left has those five bright spots."

Yeah, now that she mentioned it, Clint could sort of see it. The wave patterns congregated in those five spots, lighting them up occasionally. "What of it?"

"Look at this." Tony swiped again, and the pattern on the left changed to some other attractive squiggles. Clint, familiar with the game by now, waited and yup, there were the spots, burning up at regular intervals. "You see?"

"We see," Natasha said. "We don't understand."

Tony lifted both of his hands and the previous set of squiggles, the one with no spots returned. "Left is Brock Rumlow, right is Steve Rogers. Also known as Captain's original self, circa two years ago." He waved again and the right screen changed. "Brock Rumlow and Melissa Kraczkowski. Brock Rumlow and the Winter Soldier. Brock Rumlow and Arnie Roth."

"Brock Rumlow is an imprint?" Wilson said, hardly believing his words.

"Exactly. And hey, I also have a cool bonus. JARVIS, pull up the thing we found last night."

"Yes sir," said the AI, and the right screen flickered.

"See, after the whole fiasco I googled James Barnes, just for kicks, and came up with not much. It's not an uncommon name. Then they requested the transfer, and I looked a little harder, and found this." On the screen there now was a slightly pixelated picture of Captain and Sergeant, grinning at the camera, arms around each other, a trophy held between them. They looked to be about sixteen, all skin, bones and elbows, and if Clint squinted the trophy said something like something-something High Debate Team.

"This is Steve Rogers and James Barnes. Wasn't easy to find it, seems like their generation wasn't yet selfie-ing their every move, so I had to go back a few years. James Barnes went to a high school in Brooklyn, got into a not entirely terrible college on a partial scholarship – pre-med, if you need to know – and then went missing on his twentieth birthday. They found his jacket and shoes soaking wet by the river. Cops eventually ruled it a suicide."

"But…"

"Yup." Tony sucked out half of his cup and nonchalantly leaned back. "Ain't that something."

"We need to tell Fury."

"Hold up a second," Clint said, entirely unconsciously getting himself between the door and everyone. "I'm not vetoing it completely, mind, just, can we talk about it? Are we sure we want to talk to Fury about this?" Because all was fun and games while it was a medical mystery, but this? "No offence, but if I wanted a cover up, this is exactly the place I would go. Do we wanna bring this to the man in charge?"

And Natasha, who scarcely trusted her own reflection, looked him dead in the eye and said, "Yes."

"Okay then," Clint said. "Let's do this then."

 

Fury, predictably, was less than impressed with the story as a whole. "And the reason I'm only hearing about this now is?" he asked, after Natasha finished speaking.

"There was no evidence to support Captain's outbursts," Carter said. "We deferred to Tony as the expert."

"Re-imprinting of the original personality must be authorized by me."

"Unless it's deemed a medical emergency," Stark piped up. "It was an emergency."

"In which case I should have been notified immediately."

"Nick," Natasha said quietly. "What do we do?"

"This Rumlow… You're sure it's an imprint?"

"Yes. And it's not a very good one." Tony fiddled with his pad. "See a really good imprint—"

"Spare me the details."

"The details are all that matters!" The datapad landed on the table and Tony waved his hands over it, bringing up a projection of the infamous squiggles. "See, this is a personality you can hang an operation on. All custom details, patchwork of seamlessly matching pieces from dozens of complete scans. It seems contradictory, and it is, but that's how a good imprint works: the contradiction keeps the mind going, makes it create itself all over again, which is what a personality is! The only way to distinguish a good imprint from an original is those five points, the anchors which keep the foreign mind steady on the doll architecture. And the seams, but you have to be very good to see those.

"And this is Rumlow. Hardly any patching, hardly any depth. Far as I can tell this is a straight up routine scan with a few DVD extras. I'd be surprised if the guy remembers anything but six very specific childhood memories, three phone numbers and a generic mother-face. Forget about the Turing test, I'd be shocked if he could get away with pretending to be human at a Republican convention."

Fury rubbed the bridge of his nose.

"What about Captain?" Carter asked carefully. "We thought maybe he was delusional, but…"

"He came to us to get his PTSD treated," Fury said. "Special referral by Margaret Carter."

"Was she ever issued passcodes into our systems?" Wilson asked, bringing up his datapad. "We've had repeated access logged by this one user—"

"PC10744? That's her."

"The very first thing she did was to look up Sergeant in our system. Then Captain showed up."

Fury closed his eyes. "Bring him in for questioning, then. Romanoff, Wilson, you both go pack and have Pepper book a flight for you. We're bringing Sergeant home right now. Hill, contact Director Pierce and have him get here immediately."

"Whoa, isn't that hasty? We don't want to alert anyone yet, do we?"

"Mr. Barton, at this point we have to assume James Barnes never signed a consent form, which means we have been party to human trafficking and enslavement. This is now priority one and we're going into lockdown, do you understand? Hill, check the asset assignments. Anything that isn't a life-or-death situation, or pro-bono, gets cancelled, effective immediately."

"Yes, sir," Maria said, already busily typing at her laptop.

"The rest of you, to the imprinting room. We have an interview."

 

As before, Captain woke in a disgruntled mood, which only soured when he heard the date. "It's been less than two years."

"Why are you here, Mr. Rogers?" Fury asked without preamble.

"PTSD," Rogers said immediately. "I was told you can fix it."

"Funny story," Tony piped up, and Fury immediately raised his eye to the heavens. "Your PTSD isn't severe enough to warrant the full service, if you know what I mean. I can tell. You definitely need some help, but I wouldn't go all crazy with brainwashing right of the bat. Have you tried hypnotherapy?"

"Which leads me to believe the recommendation was in fact an assignment." Fury advanced on the man, who tensed in his chair. "I take the security of my assets very seriously, Mr. Rogers. I would like to know what it is you're trying to accomplish."

"I'm here for Bucky," Rogers said finally. "I know he's here. Peggy found him."

"Bucky?"

"James Barnes," Carter supplied.

"He's quite safe with us," Fury said with a truly awe-inspiring poker-face. "Director Carter could have told you that."

Rogers glared at him with barely contained contempt. "Yeah. That's what they told her in DC, too."

"DC?"

"Bucky went missing ten years ago. He was twenty. They never found his body." Rogers gripped the sides of the chair and leaned forward, like he was going to be sick. "They said he killed himself, jumped into the river, and I was—I didn't take it well. Losing him—" Rogers closed his eyes and shook himself, visibly coming out of a memory which hadn't had the option of fading. "I couldn't believe it. Bucky volunteered for a suicide hotline, like hell he'd try before talking to someone, talking to me. I read every book, talked to every psychologist I could find, there were no warning signs. None.

"But it looked like he did," he said after a brief pause. "I couldn't believe it, but the facts were convincing. And then I saw him in DC last month – I mean two years ago. In January. He was walking a dog with this elderly lady. But he had no idea who I was, didn't respond to his name. He even showed me his ID, a fucking class ring from Minnesota State. But it was him, I knew it was. I know him. I would know him anywhere. So, I went to Peggy, and she told me about the Dollhouse. She had enough clout to check in DC, and it was his picture, sure enough. But we couldn't get into his personal file to confirm, and then Peggy tried to contact the people in charge, yet when she did, he was no longer there. They said his contract expired, and he's been released.

"Only… Peggy then got a bulletin from New York with updates about the Dollhouse here, and Bucky was on it. If he was released from the contract, why did he immediately show up in another Dollhouse? It wasn't even a week!"

"So what, you decided volunteering would help?" Tony asked, curiously.

Rogers grimaced. "My file isn't actually lying. I do have PTSD, and depression. Iraq, you know? I was a captain. Peggy… she thought it might do me some good to become an asset. And this way I'd be in the actual Dollhouse, with Bucky."

"Right," Fury said, his expression grim.

"I know he's here," Rogers said with religious conviction. "Please, let me see him. I need to know he's okay, I need to—Please."

Fury sighed and lost a fraction of his height to a sympathetic micro-slouch. "He's out on assignment right now. We'll let you know what he gets back. In the meantime, you should probably rest."

Rogers looked up, not quite believing his ears. "What do you mean on assignment?"

"Carter – take Mr. Rogers to the cantina, and then to one of the guest rooms. We will let you know the minute he is on his way home."

Carter, a consummate doll-wrangling professional, put on her warm and pleasant face and said "Hi, I'm Sharon Carter. Peggy Carter is my great-aunt."

"Have we met?"

"I was looking after you for some time now." Carter smiled, and Rogers, though smiling was clearly the last thing on his mind, smiled back. "Let's get you something to eat, and maybe some more… adult clothes."

Clint sidled over to Fury once Rogers was escorted out and, very quietly, asked "So, what is the plan for when he finds out that we misplaced his pal?"

"We did not misplace anybody's pal, Mr. Barton."

"But that's kind of the thing, isn't it. We don't know where he is. There's a walking, talking body in LA with no brain to back it up, and we have no way of getting the brain back."

"Stark, check the copy."

"Uh—I need Wilson for that."

"I can override his codes."

"Well, fine, you got me: I already did. It's also Rumlow."

Fury stared at Tony like he was seeing him for the first time in his multi-century life. "Stark… these are human beings we are dealing with here. Bringing out original scans for shits and giggles will not be tolerated, do you understand? Do not make the mistake of thinking yourself irreplaceable."

It looked like Tony could be uncomfortable after all. Well done, Fury, Clint thought and mentally slapped a high-five against his own hand. He wasn't quite relaxed enough to ask for one from Fury himself, even in his own mind. He might have lost an arm.

"Hey, speaking of arms," he said, as a lightbulb flickered to life in his cranium. "Sergeant has a metal arm, and Rogers had no idea, so Barnes didn't have a metal arm."

"You point?"

"These babies aren't exactly free-range, get what I'm saying? He's got full range of motion, he fights like a demon, he's the go-to Winter Soldier, for crying out loud! I mean hell, I don't think even the fanciest of the metal limbs I have seen don't function half so well!"

"Do we have the serial number of the prosthetic?" Fury asked of Tony, who immediately looked up to the ceiling. "JARVIS? Any help?"

"No," said the voice in the ceiling.

"Excuse me?"

"Sergeant's prosthetic doesn't match any available models, and it has no identifying numbers."

"Okay… so a college kid just disappears off of the street one day, and turns up in the fucking Dollhouse a decade later, with no memory back-up and a custom-made prosthetic that's way ahead of the curve."

"Yes?"

Clint closed his mouth and shrugged. "Nothing, it just felt like a cool summary. I've no follow-up."

"Good to know." Fury stared at the wall for thirty more seconds, then picked up the phone. "Maria. I need you to not call Pierce tonight."

Brief pause followed, which Clint interpreted as Hill saying that the thing she was just told not to do, she definitely already did. And sure enough, "Fuck," was Fury's only comment.

"Call Natasha and Wilson. Tell them their asses are on fire."

"Uh," Clint said, eyes open wide. "Does that mean what I think it means?"

"It means we have repeated failures on the part of people we pay well to ensure shit like that doesn't happen, and for once I can't blame Stark."

"I thought we already knew that."

"We pay people to investigate our clients and our assets, precisely to avoid situations like this.  Mr. Barton, how would you explain the fact that Mr. Barnes was moved between at least three different Dollhouses without a single raised flag?"

James Barnes had not been buried deep. There was only one explanation. Because these days everything was online, even of the generation which wasn't born with cellphones in their hands, and Tony found the picture with barely any effort. Even accounting for the fact that no Dollhouse would have had the original name, facial recognition was a thing these days. Which meant whoever got paid to do the job in the first place took money for sticking his or her thumbs up their ass and twiddling. "Someone inside made it so," Clint said, slowly. "Someone who could show up and say, hey, let's not do it by the book."

Fury grimaced and set the phone down, and such was the force of his grimace that even Tony kept his peace. "Exactly."

"Oh."

 

The flight from New York to Los Angeles, including requisite drives and waiting at the airport, takes typically just enough time for, and here is Clint, reaching completely at random, a fully grown, muscular man to have a healthy meal, a bit of rest, some pacing, a little angry posturing, a stunning speech on the nature of freedom and importance of free will, worthy of Shakespeare, and three hours of a solid impersonation of the Donkey from Shrek.

"Yes, they are there," Fury snapped finally. "Sit down, Mr. Rogers, and wait for information."

Rogers did, with extreme reluctance, although every inch of him visibly strained.

In contrast, Natasha's voice, when it finally came from the speaker, was calm and relaxed. "We have Sergeant. He's fine. We're getting on the next flight out of LAX—Sam goddamn it, grab him!"

Thus ended the call.

"And that's why the transport protocol exists," Tony said into the ensuing silence. "The dolls get overstimulated, wander off, ask questions, and then we have a situation."

"I'm fairly sure this already was a situation," Rogers said wryly.

It was just past three am then. Suffice to say the night was not comfortable for all involved, except Clint. Clint wedged his shoulder into the nook by a pillow, and fell asleep on the fairly comfortable carpet. It was going to be six hours, more or less. No reason not to sleep.

 

He woke feeling quite refreshed five hours later, to find Rogers pacing and Fury narrowly containing the urge to strangle him, even as he majestically did nothing. Maria Hill was in the chair opposite, her fingers tapping out the famous "I Work As I Panic", a symphony in A major on the keyboard of her laptop.

Clint stretched. "Any news?"

"The plane has just landed," Hill told him and as if on cue three separate phones dinged. Clint reached into his pocket and found reassurance from Natasha that they were safely on the ground, and should be expected within the next hour.

"Great, more time to pace," he said into the ether and stretched his legs. "I could go for a coffee. Is the cafeteria open yet?"

"It's eight am."

"Oooh, fresh cinnabons! Come on, Rogers. Have a coffee with me."

"I'm good, thanks."

"No offence, dude, but you're a big guy. You need food, and plenty of it."

Rogers clenched his fists but eventually conceded, that yeah, his muscles didn't get to where they are by fasting. "Alright. But if anything happens—"

"Fetch me a cappuccino," Fury said.

"Black for me."

"I'll take a whole pot," Stark supplied helpfully. "Just tell Lang it's for me, he knows what I like."

Clint saluted and dragged Rogers to the barely open cafeteria, mercifully empty of handlers, else Clint would have some very weird questions to answer in regards to the doll that was no longer dressed like a doll and looking about one hundred times more aware than it should be. Not a good plan. So, they proceeded to grab all the food they could, including every variety of cinnamon bun available (raisins!), several cups of coffee, the pot and the kettle besides.

That, unfortunately, took enough time for the early wave of dolls to start trickling in, drawn by the heavenly smells. Rogers watched them queue up by the counter, staring at the food with no obvious desire, just a low-level early-morning case of the munchies, like completely benign zombies. It was a bit of a chilling spectacle for the newcomer.

"How can you work here?" Rogers asked, while Scott saluted behind the counter, though not without giving Rogers a very impolite once-over, and proceeded to pile warm cinnabons onto a plate.

"Eh," Clint said smartly. "It's actually not that bad."

"Not that bad? They're all… blank."

Witch was standing directly behind him, her humongous eyes fixed on the buns Scott was handling out along with fresh juice and cups of granola yoghurt.

"That's the idea."

"And it doesn't bother you? At all?"

"Look, I get it's not for everyone. And most folks would have reservations. But they tell me all of them volunteered, and they are getting plenty in return. Mental health, for one. Money. We get grilled weekly by psychology professors to make sure we recognize the signs of trouble."

Rogers bristled. "Not all of them volunteered."

"I grant you, Barnes is a bit of a bummer."

"Bit of a bummer?" Rogers glowered at him like a smoldering volcano god.

"Look, man. I promise you, I had no idea something might be fishy, okay?" Other than the weird patterns and general heebie-jeebies, but hey, a dude's gotta have some reality filters, right? "I know Nat and look, I have seen her kill folks without blinking, but she tells me she thinks it's fair, and I believe her. You can build on that. And she trusts Fury with her life, so there's that, too."

"Why?"

"I don't really know. But I know Nat, so it's good enough."

Rogers said nothing for a while, not until they were almost out of the cafeteria and the curious looks of the other handlers were no longer on them. "When Bucky went missing, we – his family and I – we searched everywhere. We dragged the river. We harassed his school friends. His ma and sisters still leave a plate out for him at Thanksgiving and Christmas. His father had a heart attack, had to quit his job. I went to Iraq and then I joined the police to get access to the case files they wouldn't show me."

"Oh fuck me. You're a cop?"

Rogers offered a small smile. "Got fired for mishandling evidence and ethics violations. I also picked a fight with the chief for refusing to reopen the case after I saw Bucky in DC. So, no. Not anymore."

"Damn, son," Clint said, impressed to his very bones. "Who is that kid?"

"He's just Bucky." Rogers bit his lip and rapped his knuckles against the tray. "He's Bucky."

"Right. That makes sense." Oh boy, Clint thought to himself as they made their way back to the conference room, trays of food in tow. Oh boy.

The coffee lasted them until about half an hour later, when the door to the conference room opened and Natasha walked in, followed by Sergeant, followed by Wilson. All three in mint-condition.

Rogers was out of his chair and across the room in the space of a blink, patting his boy down, with the reverence of a Catholic priest handing out the sacramental bread, to the doll's obvious confusion. And Rogers was doing a good job of keeping his feelings down and out of it, until he accidentally pressed too hard on an elbow and encountered slightly less give than flesh should have, heading to looking down, leading to…

"What happened?" he asked, first in a whisper, then louder, to the room at large.

"We don't know. He already had the prosthetic before he came here," Fury said. "You said you saw him in DC?"

"It was January, he was wearing a jacket and gloves."

"We don't know," Fury said yet again, slower this time.

"I'm hearing that a lot, and I'm starting to feel like that's bullshit."

"That's not all," Natasha said, then lifted her head and said, enunciating clearly, " _Sergeant, tell me what is the weather like outside_?"

" _Sunny and windy. There are small white clouds in the sky_ ," the doll answered, looking to Rogers as soon as he flinched. " _It's warm. I like it when it's warm_."

"So he speaks surprisingly fluent Spanish," Clint said, after a beat. "I'm guessing that's not supposed to be in the travelling imprint?"

"He wasn't imprinted. We had the LA Dollhouse give him shoes and a jacket, and that's it."

"He tried to wander off, once or twice, to look at displays. At one point a kid walked up to him and started asking questions about his arm, in Spanish. And he started answering." Wilson set his phone on the table and entwined his fingers. "He slept on the plane and mumbled, also in Spanish."

Tony stared at the doll until his eyes bled and then turned to Rogers. "Did he speak Spanish? Before?"

"No. A couple phrases, maybe. He spoke Japanese, Russian, French and German though. Not fluently, but well enough."

"This is bad, then. This is very bad. Bad!"

"Why is this bad?" Rogers asked, gently pulling Sergeant to a chair. "She speaks Spanish."

"Can I field this one? I'm going to field this one." Tony stood up, a cup of coffee grasped firmly in his hand. "It's bad, because on a scale of New Earth to a white baby adopted by a black couple growing up able to dance, this is a solid case of rabbit bones in the jaws of a T-rex."

"I don't get it," Rogers said a few long moments later, when everyone took their time to digest the very vivid and rather unclear metaphor. Everyone aside from Sergeant, that was, who found himself amused by the flakes of sugar coming off a remainder of Rogers' cinnamon bun. "Why does it matter?"

"He means the science behind imprints doesn't allow for it," Carter said.

"You said I drew people I knew from before when I was a doll. How is that different?"

"Retaining abilities from before the first wipe is not wholly unusual," Tony explained. "In case of very specific skills, especially motor skill which would have taken years to cultivate, it's actually common. And memories, yeah, images echo, no biggie. So a drawing doll, hardly an issue, a non-Spanish speaking doll suddenly speaking Spanish, yup, problem. Actually a doll speaking another language is a problem, period, because learning language—"

"He could have learned later," Rogers interrupted. "He picked up languages fast."

"Granted," Tony began, only to be interrupted, again, by Fury, whose cell phone was flush against his ear.

"Pierce is here."

Natasha stilled, and her hand went to her hip, seeking a weapon she didn't have. "What do we do?"

"Hide?" Clint suggested, looking around.

But Fury stood up and raised the phone. "Send him to the conference room."

A short while later the door to the room opened, and in strode the man Clint had seen on the covers of the sort of newspapers he never bought. Cool. Imposing. Suave.

"Nick," he said, even as the two extremely creepy-yet-scarily-competent goons, cunningly disguised as goons in suits, perched on either shoulder. "To what crisis do I owe this late night summons?"

"Alexander."

Clint, whose education in the intricacies of corporate deals unfortunately culminated in someone (him) drawing a weapon and shooting someone (not him) in the head, watched Director Pierce's gaze slide smoothly over the occupants of the room, very deliberately pausing at no one. This man had a poker face to rival a bronze statue, and no mistake.

But then, to Clint's surprise, Pierce sighed, picked a chair and sat down. "Do you have any actual proof?"

"I haven't made the accusation yet."

"I'm sure that's why you're gathered all your pet assassins. What do you want?"

"Why Bucky?" Rogers managed through clenched teeth. "What had he ever done to you?"

Pierce looked Rogers dead in the eye and said, "Let me assure you, I have no idea what you're talking about. I have done absolutely nothing to Mr. Barnes."

"Uh… Is this the fatal slip-up?" Tony said. "The part where we all say a-ha! this is a detail you shouldn't know? Because this sounds like an admission of guilt, is it an admission of guilt?"

It was almost like Pierce didn't hear him. "First of all, you have to know that what happened to your friend was – started off – as an accident. He was brought to a hospital after being struck by a garbage truck. He was in critical condition, left arm mutilated to the point amputation was the only option. He had no identification on him and at the time facial recognition was not an option.

"Due to… let's call it overzealousness of one of the doctors, and many assumptions which later proved false, he was declared brain-dead and volunteered for testing an experimental prosthetic. Nerve grafting in particular."

Tony raised his hand. "Uh, I hate to pull the rug from under any legal argument, but for nerve grafting you need nerves. Working nerves. Snapping synapses, if you will. If a patient is brain-dead, that's not happening."

"That's true. And it's just one of the several reasons Dr. Zola is now enjoying life without parole." Pierce smiled wanly. "He had assured me, at the time, that Mr. Barnes' brain sustained enough damage to make his full recovery impossible."

But Tony was already shaking his head. "I ran scans of his brain on a regular basis. He wouldn't have been eligible if there was significant physical trauma to the tissues."

"Because, as it turned out, there hadn't been significant damage. Sub-cranial bleeding, yes. Unfortunately that didn't become apparent until sometime later." Pierce held up a hand and one of his goons handed him a datapad. "The full, original medical file. Feel free to peruse."

"That doesn't explain how he ended up here," Rogers said, and it was clear he was boiling, burning, furious. His hand gripped the edge of the table and he leaned forward, like a wild creature about to strike. "Why didn't you contact his family. If you knew – and you just said you did – why didn't you contact us?"

"You are over-estimating my involvement."

"You—" Rogers began, but Fury silenced him with a look. Clint had a feeling this was a feat permissible only to the truly badass.

"I knew Zola, briefly. Never met a man more likely to have cheated on an ethics test. He would misappropriate patients for his own little experiments," Fury said, putting himself firmly on Rogers' hit list, no lie. "This doesn't explain how did Mr. Barnes end up as an asset in my Dollhouse."

Pierce fixed him with a calculating look. "Rumlow, if you don't mind?"

The goon on the left rolled his eyes, but went, crossed the room, and, without breaking the consummate professional stride, yanked Barnes out of his chair, and pulled his other fist back, for a punch. And then, somehow, he was on the ground, the pistol previously concealed under his jacket in the doll's hand.

Clint went through the scene in the privacy of his head, in slow motion. There was the fist, sure, and then there was the slight twist of the hips on Barnes' part, his metal arm coming up to cover his face, with the elbow pointed squarely in Rumlow's – Rumlow's!! – face, while his right moved out and around, grabbing Rumlow's t-shirt and flipped him over. A difficult throw executed masterfully, by a man for whom flakes of glazed sugar contained the mysteries of the universe.

"I have so many questions," Stark said immediately. "For one thing—"

"Mr. Barnes," Pierce said over him, "Is not an asset." Of course, that statement was belied by how quickly Barnes settled into curious kitten mode, inching back, letting the gun – oh good, safety off, that's safe – fall to the ground. He looked at Natasha, then Rogers, and sat back down, while Rumlow picked himself up, gun and all, and dusted his sleeve.

"Seeing how I run this show, I would have noticed."

It was no stretch to call the smile Tony was awarded patronizing. "No, you wouldn't have."

"Excuse me—"

"When were you educated on the details of neuro-imprinting?"

"Why is my resume suddenly in question? Weren't we discussing your crimes against humanity?"

"The imprinting process we use is significantly streamlined versus what was taught when I was in college," Carter said. "I remember seeing a video of, chimps, I think? The imprint took half an hour, and all it did was make it dance."

"Someone is paying attention. As Miss Carter said, as far as the public is concerned, the imprinting is lengthy, uncomfortable, and even invasive, with results limited to simple actions. That's what is taught at universities even now.

"Back then, the process used in the early Dollhouses took well over an hour, and was quite distressing for the assets, hence unpredictability and even brain damage. Before an imprint a targeted wipe would be performed, to prepare ground for the desired personality, and only that personality. The wipe was impermanent; anything designed to last would cause irreversible damage. There was no such thing as an asset, because no human could be kept in wiped state, unless his brain was already beyond help."

"What's that have to do with Barnes?" Natasha asked. "You said Zola was working on prosthetics."

"Zola… ran into an issue with the prosthetic. Mr. Barnes was not cooperating on a neurological level, so Zola thought to utilize the existing wiping technology to reduce his neurological output."

And okay, even Clint was shaking with cold fury at this point, but Rogers? It was only the fact that he had his arm around Barnes' shoulder that stopped blood from flowing. Because Clint could read between the lines. That Barnes got into the hands of an unethical asshole with a medical degree, that was bad luck, but the fact that Barnes was sitting here, pleasant and vacant, a decade after the fact… well, that was downright uncanny, unless someone with far more clout than a doctor had gotten involved.

But, this someone with clout had goons with guns. And sure, Clint and Natasha were pretty deadly, even unarmed, Rogers could fight, but they were also in their proverbial pajamas, which made them sitting ducks.

"He just—"

"He had the bright notion that reducing certain brain functions to the fundamentals would result in reducing the feedback loop in the arm. And it worked. With reduced output the prosthetic could be seamlessly integrated into the nervous system, and by applying certain… overlays the brain could be tricked into treating it as an integral body part. Incidentally, those overlays could be applied via electro-magnetic waves, but as it turned out later, only if the recipient's brain had been properly primed."

"Holy shit," Tony said, in something much like awe. "He's patient zero. The asset. The very first one."

"It's all on there." Pierce indicated the datapad on the table.

And Clint didn't need to look to know Rogers was this close to going for Pierce's throat, with his teeth if need be. Hell, he was halfway up, straining to keep his hold on the table even as he stood. Not that Clint wouldn't mind having a stab himself, but, it turned out there was still a regrettable measure of control in the man.

"Bucky's original imprint," Rogers asked. "The scans, the first procedure. What happened to them?"

There was a long moment in which Pierce's mask slipped, and Clint could almost, almost see him wince. "He doesn't have one," he said eventually. "The wipe was… Well. Zola thought he was dealing with a junkie no one would miss." Another pause, an even longer one. "I'm sorry," he said, and Clint couldn't have been the only one who thought that sounded weak. Weak an unfamiliar.

Rogers though… Rogers fell into a chair and stared blankly at the tabletop. "No."

And such was the power of his shock that when Pierce stood up and excused himself, they didn't even blink. Although if pressed Clint would have blamed the guns and the goons, because emotions were for children.

"Wait, wait, whoa! Are we going to let him walk away from this?" he managed, some three minutes later, three rather emotional minutes of a grown man having a complete mental breakdown.

"Walk away from…?" Fury asked, toying with his phone.

"Didn't he sorta admit he knew full well why and how did Barnes end up in the Dollhouse?"

"Your point?"

"Are we supposed to buy he's only just realized all this? I mean the first thing you do is scan, right? So whoever got him first had to know Barnes was already blank!"

Fury stared at him. "Alexander is one of my oldest friends. Do you think I would cause a ruckus over a fact that a man, whom I have admired and respected for most of my adult life – who is also my boss – was party to human trafficking and covered up illegal human experimentation, with my own potential incarceration on the line?"

Clint stared, first at him then at Natasha. He looked at her for a good long while. And then he said, "Yes, I really, really do."

Fury, goddamn him, smirked. "And you are not wrong."


	4. What Remains

What followed was an argument. It would have been bigger, probably, if Rogers had been in his right mind, and not borderline catatonic, as Clint had a feeling this was not a man who let things slide gently into the night. But he wasn't in the mood right now, and that was good, too. The thing about taking down a head of a major corporation was that it can either be done big, or it could be done with minimal collateral damage. So it really was no surprise that Fury tasked Clint and Tony, along with Carter and Natasha, with escorting Rogers back into the familiarity of the Dollhouse, where they could lounge in silence and politely look away as Rogers fell apart.

"I just…" he said eventually. "What am I supposed to do?" And he buried his face in his hands, breath hitching painfully, just shy of a sob.

There was an impulse in Clint to get up, to stand and comfort him, hugs being some form of placebo, at least. But the moment he tried he felt the vice of Natasha's hand closing around his wrist, keeping him down and away. "Look," she breathed, and Clint strained his eyes and watched as something in Barnes unfolded, something that wasn't there before, and his flesh hand moved up, before gently resting in Rogers' hair.

Rogers sprang back, as though burned, and stared at his friend – yeah, Clint was having Suspicions – eyes darting wildly from his hand (which was still in the air) to his other hand (shiny and chrome and resting in his lap), to his face. "Bucky?"

Barnes' head listed to the side, and his hand lowered to his lap, to twine with the metal one.

"You're sad," he observed.

"Yeah."

"Why?"

Rogers opened his mouth and shot a quick glance at Tony. "I'm—I miss my friend."

Barnes considered this for a moment. Then he reached out and gently laid a hand on Rogers'. "That's okay."

"It is?"

"Everyone comes back," he said. And then he yawned. Which triggered a response in Natasha, who ushered him quickly to the sleeping pod, like a good handler should. Or at least she tried, were it not for Tony, who got into her way.

"Am I in your way?"

"You know, he may not be wrong about this," Tony said, eyes fixed on Pierce's datapad and yet somehow matching Natasha step for step. "See, the thing is, asset architecture requires mapping out the brain and scrubbing it down. In detail. It's nasty. It's unpleasant. There's needles. Deep-cleaning, the sort that's very, very permanent. That's how people go mad, you know. Sensory deprivation gets you in the end, and there's no sense more deprived than the brain itself. Leave a doll alone long enough and boom, headshot. No a literal headshot, they lack the drive, but this is literally why we wipe them. Although again with the misnomers, we need a better language.

"Okay, does anyone know how does wiping work? Anyone? Well, let me tell you. There is the wipe and there are the wipes. Wipelings? Wipplings? Never mind.  The first, the big one, that's when we install the architecture. But the small ones, after each assignment, aren't so much wipes as they are a return to status quo, to the state of nothingness, of blank slate. The great big wipe levels, and after that it's only a matter of swiping."

"Tony…"

"…and in his case, _it hasn't been done_." He flipped through several charts and a wall of text, barely cognizant of company, never mind that the company just collectively froze. "He got blanketed. Which is bad, grant you. Blankets can be fatal. Also occur naturally, funnily enough. Strokes and such. But he was very deliberately blanketed and then imprinted, over and over, until his brain was forced to shut down and accept the imprints and blank itself out to match. All the scans I have match the asset architecture well enough to fool me, and maybe if I sleep on it things will change, but that has yet to happen, so."

"What's that mean?" Rogers asked, while the rest of them politely pretended his face didn't look like it had a forceful encounter with a wall of something he was deadly allergic to.

"I think he's saying Barnes' original personality is not completely gone?" Carter said, while chewing on a fingernail. "I'm not sure, I have a degree in biology, not Stark."

"Look!" Tony exclaimed to the room at large, blowing up some more colorful squigglies. "Look! The very first. Right there. But he was never meant to be erased! Do you know what this means?"

"No, we don't," Natasha said patiently, because Tony Stark often needed the reminder.

"Carter, save the room in my eyes."

"You realize that when I got my diploma making a chimp do the tango was considered the apex of what the technology is capable of, right?"

"You people need to find your inner nerds." Tony turned back and forth between the screens. "Zola wasn't working on imprinting. Zola wanted a functioning prosthetic. Which means, he didn't _erase_ things. A prosthetic which only works on a vegetable is worthless." He looked excitedly between Rogers and Barnes. "Help me out here, laser-disc. according to this it's been six days since your last imprint, looks like the LA Dollhouse didn't need you that badly after all. What's your name?"

Barnes frowned and opened his mouth, closed it, and then opening it again. "Sasha," he said, still frowning. "Brock. Arnold. John. Terrence. Maggie."

"See?"

"Not really?"

"These are the names of his past imprints! Maggie was a treat, let me tell you. Which means he remembers, just as he remembers how to speak Spanish and kick ass! A plus show, but the way, I'm always there for goons getting elbowed in the face."

"He's…" Rogers asked, looking up at Tony, with the naked of fear one presumably only experienced in really good churches. "He'll—remember?"

"Well, no, don't quote me as making promises. Of any kind. But let's maybe try not shoving more people into his head for a while, and then we'll see what happens."

 

What happened, broadly speaking, was this: Fury put Rogers to work sifting through mountains of data, tracing every phonecall in all Dollhouses they could confirm Barnes had been assigned to over the years. Rogers, fueled by the passion of a thousand suns, came up with gems upon which a hung-over first-year law student could build a rock-solid case, and, sure as shit, Pierce went down like a lead balloon. He had to be fetched from the Cayman islands, but what's a little kidnapping between friends. Clint, Witch, three other dolls plus Carter and Natasha cornered him by a luxurious pool, and brought him home, right as rain.

Barnes, now a victim of chronic unemployment, floundered a little in week one, wandering around the Dollhouse like a lost little puppy. Week two had him curiously poking at the equipment in the infirmary and pocketing a box of ibuprofen. Week four saw him brewing herbal tea for Natasha, during the full moon. Clint was raised in a literal circus, okay? That was his final comment on the matter. He was better suited to managing Scott, who was understandably upset that his tea system had been disrupted.

Week eight saw Barnes mouthing off to Fury, which, kudos, kid!

Week eleven saw a "Stevie" and a poke, and a mention of Coney Island. This was also the week the world remembered that Bucky Barnes was a little shit.

By week twenty-one Steve had moved them out of the pod they had been staying in until then, and into the quarters made available to him as a full-time employee. James didn't approve of the décor. They had a fight about it. There was yelling. Possibly about more than the décor, it wasn't like Clint was listening at the door. But they were later seen watching a movie together in the conference room, so it couldn't have been too bad.

 

"Tony said he will probably never remember everything," Natasha said some odd weeks after the argument over interior design, because Natasha liked to be the bucket of icy water on a warm and fluffy blanket in front of the fireplace. Clint forgave her, because Natasha was still waiting to be reassigned, and she didn't cope well with uselessness. "Or even most things."

"Probably not."

"And if he never remembers, what are his chances of ever going back home?"

"He went home. Kind of." Steve had, with Tony's blessing, began a strictly monitored program of chaperoned outings, visiting the old haunts and such. Some of them stirred memories, other less so, but with every one Barnes was becoming more and more of a _someone_. And it was getting better. The meeting with the family, for instance, that went… well, pretty fantastic, from what Clint heard. Other than the fact that Bucky was handed baby James to hold, a tiny human that his twenty-year-old sister popped out just last month, which had to be a shock for a dude whose last memory of the girl included pigtails and third-grade.

"Do you think he's going to be fine?"

"Tony reckons he can try going back to school next semester. He also recons that won't end well, seeing how he once imprinted him with a medical doctor."

"I remember. He was insufferable." Natasha made a face, but somewhere deep it was fond.

"Plus, Fury feels bad enough that he'll probably have a job here when he finishes."

"That's not nothing."

"Dude," Clint said, affronted. "Job security is nothing to scoff at! If I had a standing job offer when I graduated clown college, do you think I'd be here right now? If only Mr. Schmidt hadn't been an immortal demon clown from hell, my life could have turned out differently."

Natasha snorted and for a brief moment let her head rest against Clint's shoulder. "It's good to work with you again," she said.

"Same."

Down below Steve and Bucky were playing cards, and Rogers was losing miserably. He didn't look like he was too bummed about it, so Clint wasn't going to mention to him that Bucky was cheating, and not even sneakily cheating, but loudly and blatantly in-you-face cheating. Still, it was also bloody obvious that poor Steve needed to mentally review the rules of the game every time Bucky licked his lips, the sneaky fucker.

"I swear to god, if I don't get invited to the wedding, I am going to hire Witch and have her crash it. Loudly," Clint proclaimed, not bothering with the volume, because partial deafness, don't you know, and grinned when both Steve and Bucky glared at him.

This was better than all the episodes of House MD combined.

"Come on, they've got latke's in the cafeteria today," he told Natasha. "I don't see how deep-fried potatoes meet the nutrition standards I'm told are required, Fury banned hash-browns, for crying out loud, so let's grab them while Scott still has a job here."

"I could eat," Natasha said, and hey, that was good enough.

THE END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Find me on Tumblr](http://keire-ke.tumblr.com/).


End file.
